Hi Guys
I just found modX 2 hours ago - complete newbie. I have a quick question - if you, as experienced "modx-er" started a website today, would you use 0.9.6.3 or the new 2.0 Revolution.
I’m not sure if I should entirely skip learning 0.9.6.3 and just focus on 2.0, or if I should first learn 0.9.6.3 to get some background info on modx, and then learn 2.0
What would you suggest?
I’m a complete newbie to CMS, but previously a hand coder (in Notepad) of (x)HTML & CSS. I’ve been looking to transition across to a CMS system for a while. The first existing site I want to CMS-ise only has about 5 lovingly hand crafted pages currently (although that will expand), but it wants to have a updating internal news stories on the right column of the front page, and a forum for users added. I have other static sites that would get transitioned across too in due course.
After procastinating for about a year, and LOTS of reading & reseach here and elsewhere, I’ve finally got the choice down to Silverstripe or MODx... (with Drupal as a distant 3rd place).
So I was about to ask basically the same question as the original poster, but with 4 choices instead of 2... (I hope it is right to add onto this existing question rather than start a fresh one - excuse me if I got this wrong).
Obviously since the first question was asked, Evo RC is now out (as the first extra option - with Silverstripe being my other extra choice).
Of course Silverstripe or MODx is my main choice I have to make... but that still leaves me the four options, cos MODx is 3 choices in itself!
Most important to this particular thread, is the MODx aspect eg choice of Stable, Evo RC, or Revo Beta.
My hunch on this sub-choice is that I should dive straight into using EVO RC as my starting point.
My rationale for this is that 0.9.6.3 stable release uses the old terminology, so possibly a bit dated to be learning now since EVO & REVO are getting so close to GA.
REVO is more resource heavy (my servers currently wouldn’t cope), the extras support is patchy, and it is probably overkill for me right now.
EVO seems to hold that middle ground as the ideal choice for a newbie like me. There is a clear upgrade path to REVO when I need that in the future.
Am I right in saying that EVO will use all the extras & add-ons from 0.9.6.3 correctly?
I think the hardware needs for EVO are the same as for stable, is this correct? Hopefully this will run on my current host, but I haven’t managed to find out from them their memory allocation yet, but I know from previous questioining they won’t support REVO or Silverstripe (which need 64MB & 48MB respectively). I’m hoping that EVO only requires 32MB and my host has enought Ram to run EVO ok.
Obviously if I wanted to use REVO or Silverstripe, I’d have to change hosting providers, but I was hoping that the other benefit of EVO was that I could stay put with my host for now, until my site needs the goodness of REVO to expand anyway. Of course I might yet find that even EVO needs me to move hosting provider, so all three options are still in the running for me (or the fourth option of 0.9.6.3 if there is a strong reason to plump for that instead).
Any help in making these decisions would be much aprreciated.
If anyone has any comparitive pros & cons of the MODx system compared specifically to Silverstripe, I’d also love to hear your thoughts... (even if it is heavily MODx biased, as I can ask the same question over on Silverstripe forums for the other side of the argument!).
Thanks
Mike
If you will be just playing around with MODx for a while in order to learn it, I would recommend Revolution. It’s the future and it’s easier to learn and use. It won’t have all the add-ons of Evolution, but I think the critical ones will be coming soon. Revolution is very stable, in my experience. Perhaps as much or more than Evolution 1.0.
OTOH, if you are creating commercial sites for clients, Revo is probably not the way to go until the add-ons are there.
See the site in my sig for an introduction to MODx.
Bob,
Months ago that was my original thought too, to start playing with REVO alpha and learn that immediately. However since time has progressed onwards, and the beta has finally arrived, I’ve mysteriously had a change of heart towards finding EVO favourable.
In fact the very recent arrivals of EVO RC & REVO Beta are the only reasons I have shifted back to looking at MODx at all, after I’d finally just given up on MODx completely in favour of Silverstripe. I had got to the point of feeling the "real soon now" improvements of MODx were looking more & more like vapour-ware that’d never arrive! I’m glad to see it all moving along again and hence re-looking at MODx as a very serious option, but now cost is also a factor, and one I can’t ignore.
I think Revo is where I will ultimately want to be (or Silverstripe), but it demands that I spend a lot more money on better hosting. Since the first site is for a non-profit organisation and money is tight, that is a tough call to make (and not my call, as I don’t hold the purse strings). The current hosting is provided FREE and will happily support drupal, wordpress, phpBB etc and I assume EVO too (but not SIlverstripe or REVO). In this case, is REVO or Silverstripe such a big gain to make it worth jumping up to a paid supplier who can host these memory hungry apps. If EVO won’t fit on the current free hosting, then I think the choice would be more likely REVO versus Silverstripe, although EVO might still figure in that scenario for a time, if it has immediate access to add-ons I need to make the site work quickly.
My immediate decision is kind of driven by this one site, but I’ve also got an eye on the other sites that need converting afterwards, and want to choose the system I learn wisely to cope with ALL the needs of the medium term future.
I think down the line, I’ll move all sites in my control onto a suitable server that can run all the sites at once, and then the multi site capabilities of Silverstripe & REVO kick in nicely, with just one source of code to be maintained with patches and ALL the sites are instantly updated. But realistically for me, that is a few years off, and the cost outlay not one I can justify for any of the sites... yet!
But... if I can crack making reasonable CMS sites out of static ones, then I have a short queue of potential paying customers looking for such a service, and converting their sites and pulling them into my fold would be a satisfying move, if I can make it pay financially! The first step is to endure the learning curve of the right CMS...
Mike
All good points -- it’s hard to pass up free web hosting. I’m not sure what you mean when you say that the hosting service "won’t support" MODx. Does that mean that they won’t allow you to install it, that they won’t install it for you, or that they won’t help you install it? I don’t have the figures, but I doubt if MODx would use any more resources than Drupal. The current version of Revo needs extra memory during the install, but that will change and it doesn’t need all that memory just to run.
For the future, bear in mind that places like Bluehost.com are very friendly to MODx and charge about $7 per month for shared hosting. If the sites are not monsters, it’s also worth remembering that Revo will host multiple sites on one core, which can save both resources and time.
MODX Staff
